BuzzerBeater Forums

Imo the initial money is fine. Any more and it would be overkill. I'm constantly battleing the new users on TL and most of them are coming in for a week spend their money and leave. I like that it's challenging to make money and the reward is much greater after you have been saving for a month or more to get something decent from the TL.

I would not give more money to the new users. I'd give it in a different way so they cannot spend it too fast before they know well how the game is working.

i frankly dont get the distinction between fantasy basketball and a sports simulation... i mean in some sense isn't fantasy basketball a really really lame game engine? where you aren't playing a game like basketball but it is a game, with real life players, that you control.... Maybe fantasy sports need licensing fees too... but I dont see how we would be any worse off on legal ground than a fantasy basketball site.

EDIT: i am not a lawyer... obviously we would probably be sued and thats probably all it comes down to... so i'm not saying buzzerbeater thinks we can do this.

I am also not a lawyer. However, if you think about video games for various sports, they need to get licensing from the leagues to use the team names and player names. I see this website as much more like a video game, where you're running a team, rather than a fantasy sports game, where everything is based on real-world (e.g., NBA) stats.

I think BB-Forrest's point is that "everything is based on real-world (e.g. NBA) stats" is not true. Fantasy sports have a point system, and you can have different point systems. What is the legal seperation between a point system and a Game Engine? Both of them take in stats as inputs and produce winners as outputs? You don't control the players, or directly "play" a basketball game.

I suspect that the right legal decision will indeed result in all fantasy sports will need to have licenses, or that all video games don't need licenses. I think right now the sports franchises just want to have their cake and eat it.. they want to charge licenses cause they think they can make money that way, but they want fantasy sports cause they realize it builds brand loyalty etc and they realize fantasy sports would probably die if there were licensing fees and it would be very hard to regulate because statistics are so widely spread. All they feasibly could do is push fantasy sports into the same places pirated music have retreated to. You cannot freely disseminate information and then except people to just consume it and not reuse it to make other things. I think Colbert's interview last week with the copyright author made this point fantastically.

http://ccinsider.comedycentral.com/cc_insider/2009/01/col...

hmm... buzzerbeater is based in boston you know?

I think as it stands BB has three problems:

1) motivating new teams to stay in the very first weeks

I believe this might be the most important task at hand (allthough you probably have statistics on this). You need to keep people busy long enough to get them addicted.

Easier access to forums is mentioned, but I belive alot could be done to make the game more active in general.

As mentioned initially you have an active community, and the forums are buzzing. So, obviously alot of people have alot to say about the game. However, the game does not take advantage of this (other than in the forums). IMO you should make more visible what's going on. How about a "News from around the league" with news bulletins, transfers, news from the national teams, game results and so on. Alot of the information allready exists, and you could maybe add small stuff like "player/team of the week/month" (with a small price), milestones (NN just played his 100th game for TEAM X), and so on.. The possibilities are endless, easy to create (I would guess), and it would add to the fun of logging into the game on an every day basis.

I also like the idea of people acting as mentors. I don't think it would need to be anything advanced. Perhaps a sticky in the help forums where mentors and new teams could "hook up"?

And of course, a tutorial for new users. Perhaps "unlocking" secrets of the game (hints, tips) the first few important weeks, would be useful to keep people busy.

...oh, and yes. The new thing they started in HT - being able to invite friends to replace idle teams in your own league - seems like a great idea!

Just one more idea - and I know I would've loved it when I started:

What if new teams could opt to create one new player of their own. Picking the name, generating his looks, height, and being able to distribute a fixed amount of points (e.g. 50) on attributes. Potential, age (18) and total points available of course should be equal for all teams.

People could add themselves into the game, or their favourite player.

"News from around the league"

I like that idea, i would really like to se that implemented:-)